On IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 transition

October 13, 2009

IPv4 is running out!

This month (October 2009) the Internet will turn 40 years old. Ahead are new and interesting challenges.

As most network administrators know by now the world is running out of IPv4 addresses. The huge population in Asia as well as massive growth in IP enabled new devices will fuel the need for new IP addresses. Asia has already by far the most Internet users or 42%. Europe comes next with 24% and North America has roughly 15%.

Now only 12% of the IPv4 address space globally remains free and available.The prediction is that by 2011 all IPv4 addresses will be allocated.

The solution has been available for a long time. The 32 bit IPv4 addresses will be replaced by the new 128 bit IPv6 addresses. However IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible so an IPv4 device can’t communicate directly with an IPv6 device. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is a global challenge and as a result the adoption of IPv6 has been very slow.

The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 should be high on the agenda by all stakeholders responsible for the corporate network. The dual stack transition strategy is widely accepted which means that networks need to be able to run both on IPv4 and IPv6.

To facilitate IPv6 deployment Men & Mice offers the tool (Men & Mice Suite IPAM) free of charge to be used for this purpose only. The license offered is valid for 6 months and shall be used for migration purpose only.